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NEW YORK — A Russian tycoon who federal authorities say funneled illegal foreign donations to a Texas congressman and Donald Trump’s political action committee was secretly charged with conspiracy, the Justice Department revealed Monday.
The September 2020 indictment of oligarch Andrey Muraviev had remained secret until now, though prosecutors had previously identified him as the true source of $5,400 donated to Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Waco, and other illegal donations.
Two Soviet-born associates of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, have been convicted of violating campaign finance law by acting as straw men for a foreign donor.
Both were involved in Giuliani’s unsuccessful efforts to get Ukrainian officials to investigate President Joe Biden’s son during the 2020 campaign.
Fruman pleaded guilty in September to violating a ban on donations from a foreign national. In January he was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. Parnas was convicted in October and awaits sentencing.
Sessions’ former chief of staff, Caroline Boothe, testified at Parnas’ trial that she and the congressman had no idea the donations from the duo were illegal, and would certainly have rejected any donation they knew was from a foreigner or straw man.
Prosecutors told a judge in Manhattan federal court Monday that Muraviev is believed to be in Russia.
The newly unsealed indictment alleges that he wired $1 million to Fruman and Parnas with the aim of boosting his chances to secure licenses for legal marijuana businesses.
Muraviev “attempted to influence the 2018 elections by conspiring to push a million dollars of his foreign funds to candidates and campaigns. He attempted to corrupt our political system to advance his business interests,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams announcing the indictment.
Michael Driscoll, head of New York’s FBI office, said Muraviev conspired with Parnas, Fruman and another man, Andrey Kukushkin, to make illegal contributions.
“The money Muraviev injected into our political system, as alleged, was directed to politicians with views favorable to his business interests and those of his co-conspirators,” Driscoll said. “As today’s action demonstrates, we will continue to aggressively pursue all those who seek to illegally effect our nation’s elections.”
Some $325,000 of the money went to Trump’s PAC.
Parnas and Fruman promised Sessions they would help to raise $20,000 for his reelection campaign. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, unseated Sessions in November 2018. Sessions made a comeback in 2020 from a different district.
Kukushkin, a Ukrainian-born investor, is scheduled to be sentenced on Tuesday.
His lawyer, Gerald Lefcourt, called the unsealing of Muraviev’s indictment a “publicity stunt” designed to influence his client’s sentencing.
Giuliani remains under criminal investigation as authorities decide whether his interactions with Ukraine officials required him to register as a foreign agent. He has not been linked to the illegal campaign contribution scheme.
As in previous court records, Sessions is not referred to by name. The details about “Congressman-1″ make his identity clear, referring for instance to $2,700 donations each from Parnas and Fruman on June 25, 2018, which matches Sessions’ FEC records. Sessions donated the money to charity after their arrests the next year.
Prosecutors have traced more than $150,000 of Muraviev’s funds to donations to a Nevada candidate for governor that year, Republican Adam Laxalt.
As American citizens, Parnas and Fruman were entitled to make such donations.
But it’s illegal to make a donation on behalf of someone else, and donations from non-Americans are illegal.
Sessions has downplayed the donations and his connection to Parnas and Fruman.
“This was during the campaign, early in the campaign, and they did come by my office and I did meet them and I did meet them off the Hill and they did become contributors,” Sessions said in October 2019 on Lone Star Politics on KXAS-TV (NBC5). “That is not unusual for you to meet people who then become contributors.”
He noted that Parnas and Fruman told him they were partners in a business called Global Energy Producers.
“We talked about the ability for oil business,” Sessions said. “They’re very interested in oil business. I’m from Texas, and I’m interested in it also.”
At Parnas’ trial, Sessions former chief of staff, Caroline Boothe, testified that Parnas, Fruman and another man convicted in the case, David Correia, came to the Capitol in June 2018 with longtime Sessions friend Roy Bailey.
Bailey was Trump’s finance co-chair in Texas in the 2016 campaign, and a national finance co-chair in 2020.
Parnas and Fruman dangled the prospect that they would donate or round up $20,000 for Sessions, but never came through.
Prosecutors had initially linked the duo to a somewhat out of the blue effort by Sessions to urge Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to removal of Marie Yovanovitch as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. He said in a May 2018 letter to Pompeo that he had “notice of concrete evidence” that she had been trashing the Trump administration.
Trump fired Yovanovitch about a year later, one of several events that played into his first impeachment trial on allegations he threatened to withhold military aid to coerce Ukraine’s president into launching a corruption probe of Hunter Biden, who’d served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, to tarnish Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election.
Sessions said he didn’t talk with the partners about the Bidens.
On Lone Star Politics, Sessions claimed “firsthand knowledge and information” of the allegations in his letter to Pompeo.